How Can We Best Help?

If we could aim for an average of 2 children per female, the population would gradually decline since roughly half would be female and not all of those would reach child-bearing age.

(A) In order for this sir robins idea to work a new program would need to be funded, by public and government donations.

(B) Instead of " feed the children ".

(C) We could have " sterilize the women "

I don't think women would take too kindly to (C)

And I think the Chinese have already tried (A)

Give a mouse colony more food and what do suppose is going to happen?

Sorry for hurting people's feelings but it's time we have an adult conversation about this problem.

Same in this country, if you are on public assistance, you are on birth control.

Solar Eagle #13 post says it all. Education and leisure time, spent NOT having to search for food or water would help. If, at the end of the day, sex is the only diversion available( forget birth control) then if you still have the energy that may well be the only escape from reality.

which I would have to assume the birth control gets added to the public assistance.

And is available at a very young age, if its not already.

Sir Robin, I have to disagree with you.

Many of those on, public assistance, are not on, birth control.

They are on, birth encouragement.

Make MORE babies, get more public assistance.

For those of us schooled in the old ways of basic psychology (or politics in parentheses) it was well understood.

If you want to encourage a behavior you reward (subsidize) it.

If you wanted to change a behavior you punished (taxed) it.

Birth control "cuts" both ways. That is all I have to say. Next.

I spent 10 minutes saying the same thing but using increasing the food supply with advances in technologyly as the reason people just populate until starvation limits population. More food, more babies till they starve. Then I erased it because I'm on my phone watching two crazy boys fishing.

That is the sad, but inescapable truth. Some cultural norms are very difficult to alter, even if the ability to change is there.

I agree. Culture plays a huge part in population.

The other ^{(Which would be taboo for saying it)} would be religion, but only to a degree. Religion can also control over population as well as encouraging it.

Didn't you mean to respond to Storm of the century. with this statement?

How does it read for you?

Why would I comment on Fredski and his rants while he had better posts to answer to?

If any it would fit here.

Your comments about "junk science", a term used when climate deniers can't accept true scientific fact because it does not agree with their distorted view of climate change, and the reference to getting better education (hopefully for those misguided souls who can't accept the truth) seemed appropriate for Fred's thread.

How can misguided souls accept a truth that they clearly do not know because they are misguided?

This is not the thread to discuss this further.

I also still think we better discuss our ethics than to fall for blunt rants!

You did fall for it, didn't you?

Isn't collective intelligence what got the whole world into the mess it is in now?

Social Media is essentially collective intelligence that is hyper-emotional, and look how that rolls.

I think the elimination of prejudice is the top of the list....Keeping religion out of government is close to that....they both promote hatred...

Yes down with kleptocrats

Dusting-off and recommissioning B52s seems to be a retrograde step.

Aaaah, there is no such thing as <...we...>, by the way.

<unsubscribes>

I would say as a society we need to concentrate on birth control because the planet can only support so many people. Reproduction rates will only spiral out of control and yes technology can develop to grow more food but that in turn will only allow people to breed more for a certain time longer.

Down the road there will be wars fought over basic resources such as food and water.

Life is easier when there are a lot of people to share the work....

The 11% is the troubling figure. I don't doubt that figure, but until we make farming a small venture again, the big industrial farms will not want to spread into some of that remaining 89%, at least not here in the East where the workable land is not convenient for huge continuous fields, as you have out there.

So, we have more land suited for farming, but where is the incentive for the large venture farms to plant more to feed the starving masses in Africa? Keep supplies down a bit and keep prices up - right? For that matter, where is there an incentive for the return of small farms? And we do not ever want the government involved - the Russians proved that is a disaster.

Africa has plenty of areas for food crops but the governments aren't helping.

There are reasons why this is so. Much of Alaska and Colorado are mountains with steep terrain, and are not suitable for farming. Much of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Texas and Arizona (and others) have no available water to use. The same and other reasons apply to other countries. The confining of population in "small" areas is a good thing for farming. So what is you solution to this so-called problem? Have you ever been out of Minnesota?

Saudi Arabia and other countries are buying thousands of acres in Arizona to grow Alfalfa to ship back to their county. Nestle just opened a bottled water plant that will suck MILLIONS of gallons of water every day from the aquifer under Phoenix.

Developers are applying constant pressure (bribes) to the business friendly Legislature to sell more.desert to developers to build houses with NO water supply assurance.

It's all about money.

I can believe that. Most desert areas have no known underground aquifer, and yours will be dry before you know it. I didn't hear any solutions from you either.

Coca-Cola wanted to add a water bottle plant tapping into the great lakes.

The Great Lakes Compact (Multi-state agreement) put a stop to that, at the time.

But when there is money to be made, business will lobby to get a waiver. Fortunately, all the states have to come to an agreement.

Simple. Quit pumping ground water.

Problem is, the laws are decades old from when farming was the only thing in our valley.

The legislature is owned by big business and developers now so no one cares about water for 20-50 years from now.

Don't be such an ass.

"Don't be such an ass."

You first.

Send them to ND.

Around here tiling farmland to keep the ground water levels down is becoming standard operating procedure.

I'm over in the Red River Valley hauling sugar beets and everywhere I go there are lift stations in the corners of fields where the miles of drain tile line just for a single field dumps into and many of those are pumping 10's of thousands of GPH 24/7 just to keep a single 160 acre area of field dry enough to be able to grow crops.

Multiply that by 10's of thousands of fields just in this end of the state and that some serious water volume being pumped a day!

I wish I could. Our groundwater laws are so lax it's criminal.

We're going to see "water wars" in this country again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars

I find that humorous being here neighbors get all wound up about who's draining or holding back their excess water onto someone else's land not taking it.

California's fighting over who can gets what. Here we are paying big money to get rid of it!

You do know the definition of arable land don't you?

You answer first.

"There are reasons why this is so. Much of Alaska and Colorado are mountains with steep terrain, and are not suitable for farming. Much of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Texas and Arizona (and others) have no available water to use. The same and other reasons apply to other countries.

So if you are considering Alaskan mountains and near desert locations as farming land I really think it's pretty obvious who knows what the term 'arable land' means an who doesn't.

Google it and let me know if the term 'Arable land' applies to the terrains and conditions you are referring to.

As someone who grew up in farming country I have my doubts on your knowledge of the term.

This planet is vastly more generous and plentiful than people imagine. It is poor politics (not mentioning which countries, but there are plenty of them to name), poor management of resources, lack of intelligent planning, etc. that lead to insufficiency.

I suspect our world could easily support ten times the population we have now, if food production advances, water management, water purification, etc. could be brought into the 21st Century. Instead, we have people all over the planet doing things the same way as they have for decades or centuries and expecting different or better results.

I weep for humanity at times, other times, I laugh with them.

"We have people all over the planet doing things the same way as they have for decades or centuries" because the people who could help will not $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Monsanto and the sterile corn they sent to Africa is a perfect example.

The people who are doing things the same way as they have for decades or centuries do it because that is the only way they know. It's not that they expect different results, anything else is foreign to them.

Profit, greed, avarice, Wall Street, the Trump's of the world could not give the slightest damn if the people who are doing things the same way as they have for decades or centuries live, die or catch on fire and burn alive.

Excuse me, is this the break room, or is my thinking a bit cloudy here.

It seems just a tad arcane to blame all world evils on corporate entities, CEO's, etc., when dictators alone can fill that position to the ultimate.

OK, let's throw them into the lot, but don't leave the others out to bask in the glow of helping mankind because that's the right thing to do.

Power and money trump good deeds 99% of the time.

Monsanto just got badder bigger

I thought Monsanto just got bought out by Bayer of Germany.

It isn't a done deal. Still has to be approved by 5 or 6different countries. It a bad deal.cor everyone but the stockholders.

yes, as the link states...

..."In some countries the population is declining, especially in Eastern Europe, mainly due to low fertility rates, high death rates and emigration. In Southern Africa, growth is slowing due to the high number of AIDS-related deaths. Some Western Europe countries might also experience population decline.^[8] Japan's population began decreasing in 2005; it now has the highest standard of living in the world.^[9]

The United Nations Population Division projects world population to peak at over 10 billion at the end of the 21st century, but Sanjeev Sanyal has argued that global fertility will fall below the replacement rate in the 2020s and that world population will peak below 9 billion by 2050, followed by a long decline.^[10]"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth

My thoughts are:- • Limit on Population explosion. • Food storage to minimize wastage of food • To develop mechanisms to perform organic farming to minimize the chemical use for better health. • To develop affordable treatment for life threatening diseases such as AIDS, Cancer, etc. • To develop technology to protect the planet earth from environmental degradation.

Lots of good ideas, but my concerns are global warming and energy supply. Using fast nuclear reactors will handle both by decreasing CO2 production from coal generating plants. Since CO2 is a large contributor to global warming, that would also slow or hopefully stop the increasing world temperatures.

A fast reactor will consume most of what we call waste now, plus the depleted uranium left after enrichment (needed for the present thermal reactors), thorium, the warheads from decommissioned weapons, etc. No mining would be needed for thousands of years.

So warmer winter seasons and warmer temps in vast regions of the world where little to no one lives is going to kill or inconvenience who exactly?

Not just sure that earths core temperature increase has to do with atmospheric gases

I suppose this means the coffee farmers whose crops have failed must not be angry that Mother Nature has denied them rain that is critical to the production of their only source of income? Now it is "natural selection" that they should starve, along with their children? How cold of you indeed.

Part of the reason we have civilization is to provide moral solutions to the challenges the human race is always pressing. I know that morality seems to be a foreign concept to those of you who subscribe to the ethics of the bug-eyed Mantodea, however, we are humans, and require human answers to human questions. It is OK to be a Liberally educated conservative, one who is by definition a compassionate, thinking, caring human, but IMHO it is preferred to not simply pour money (or sterile corn) at world problems.

I agree that as long as the motivation is solely money or power, the human race must ultimately fail to reach the goal set forth.

Hey James, I do understand your point, but I think you may have over reacted to mine. I am not suggesting abandoning people who have circumstantial problems. Or to use clinical terminology acute conditions. I am strictly talking about our tendency to subsidize failure (chronic conditions) and call it altruism. See post 51.

In your example a successful and prosperous farmer has suffered a loss through no fault of his own. (although it could be argued that having a fall back savings account would be a better business practice, we both know in our current economy that most do not have adequate savings any longer, and that's not just farmers) In this scenario and those like it I believe firmly that we should help in order to preserve a valid business.

If, however, it becomes obvious that the area he is in no longer supports coffee growing the continued subsidy will not have the desired result. A similar thing happened to the citrus industry in Florida. The climate changed and Florida was no longer a frost free zone. Those who could survive frequent frozen crop losses did and those who could not afford to play that gamble each year did not.

When I was young, (the 1960's) we would drive from Ocala south to Orlando down Hwy 301 and 60% of the drive was through a seemingly endless orange grove. Now it is a seemingly endless retirement community.

Don't get me started on Monsanto…..

Uhhh....it's Brazil, and there is no fall-back, no subsidy. The smart ones got out a couple years ago when they starting seeing a change in the rainfall pattern.... now they just grow food crops along with some beans.

At least they should not starve. The coffee grower has no such fall-back, no safety net, no nada.

Trying to figure out how I am going to get through mornings without my coffee infusion.

Postum just ain't gonna cut it.

The thing is that if coffee was discovered in Ethiopia, how dang hard can it be to grow at all?

There is Brazil, Columbia, you would think all rainy and such, and with the Amazon basin, where did all the water go?

Do they not have pumps that could push water uphill to the coffee fields? OR is the water just too far away to start with?

In most areas where you find poor economic conditions you realize that government is not governing for the people.

We know. We're trying to fix that next month.

I hope that you mean term limits for Congress.

No, all elected officials

I'd vote for that.

At least the mistakes made would be mostly honest ones.

The Supreme Court and most judges above local level are appointed.

What about them?

Make a point of the appointer

I myself can live with honest mistakes. I'm just tired of seeing the same old stuff shirts and panties going through the motions.

Be careful when throwing out the bath water (certain officials), that the baby (the constitution is not discarded in the process.

Lincoln stated that "a house divided against itself shall not stand". He also stated that a "government by the people, of the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Who are you to make him out to be a liar?

We are either a nation under the rule of law, or there is anarchy, mayhem, murder, and total vacuum of amorality, as revealed in about 80% of the rest of the world. By the way, the remaining 20% is living under a monarchy, or an authoritarian communist government. Is that what you want? Be very, very careful what you ask for.

Actually by doing so we are trying to save 'The Constitution' because it has already been bypassed by certain officials with a pen.

Before making aqusations about exeutive orders, look at which president has issued the most.

It is not who you think.

Why? do you think I'm selective?, when I'm unhappy with ALL CAREER POLITICIANS. And I have made that known.

FDR had no shortage of ink

Back to basics of laws

https://youtu.be/_XSNHATC3kQ

Todays politician running for office.

As someone famously said, "Politicians are like diapers . . ."

So you admit they are at least modestly necessary, but have to be removed and cleaned out periodically...

This thread has morphed into a political cat fight. It reminds me of the debates. In order to get it back on track I propose that we need to find solutions to mental health problems including how to control riots, how to stop Americans from being radicalized by outsiders, how to change criminal behaviour, how to change police officers attitudes to other races, how to change the mindset of sexually perverse individuals, and how to deal with men with too much testosterone, to name a few.

I like population control.

First, let's kill all the lawyers!

You won't get any argument from me there. Let's start with the ones who are running for political office.

Hmm, odd that you group mental health and rioting together.

How to stop Americans from being radicalized ? How about canceling twitter, Facebook and the internet.

How to change criminal behavior ? Incentives for good behavior.

How to change police officers attitudes to other races ? How about changing other races attitudes to police officers.

How to change the mindset of sexually perverse individuals ? How about electric shock therapy, or just electric shock.

How to deal with men with too much testosterone ? In the 1700's they used to use leeches to bleed off people or cold showers work sometimes.

The eliminating social behavior, possible a good start.

As far as criminal Incentives for good behavior?, like what, a job?

i feel that it has to start at a younger age. It's stats there, I've said it before, people begin making poor life's choices early, and as it continues, their options drop. And that is the difficult start, because there are a lot of people who like to throw these people in as victims.

Statistics tend to bear out that having a father at home during the development years is one of the keys to having solid citizenship (i.e. law-abiding) later on in life. Absent fathers come in all shapes and sizes, including those who are workaholic, alcoholic, and just plain gone.

Apart from being someone's father, set a good example in your community, work and play hard, and remember to honor your God who loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Above and beyond all else, show your children the best example of Christian behavior by loving your wife (you know what this means, and it ain't all in the bedroom, silly person).

This ain't rocket science, just common sense, but I know from experience that distractions in life can pull one off course rather easily.

As far as changing behavior of criminals, especially sex offenders, you can't change them any more than you can change a drug addict, they must really, really want to change, and it takes a lot of work, psychotherapy, and a solid 12-step program.

Most criminals unfortunately are not all that sorry for what they have done, but rather, they are sorry they got caught.

James, what is: The 12 step program ? Why 12 steps ? How about the: 1 step program, or the 13 step program. Who decided how many, " steps " are required ?

Phoenix, the incentive program would go something like this: police stop people for speeding, not wearing seat belts, doing a California stop, not using turn signals etc, and issue citations.

How about a program where the revenues received from violators, was used to incentivize good driving behavior.

You make a complete stop at a stop sign, use your turn signals, wear your seat belt, drive the speed limit.

A special police safety patrol See's good behavior, stops drivers and thanks them for being safe and gives them a gift card for a free meal at a local restaurant.

Once word gets out that if you drive safe, you might get lucky enough to get stopped and get a gift card.

The side benefit here is that interaction between the police and the public will be on a positive note, rather than on a generally negative note as it is now.

Of course, this will program will never happen, because if everyone started obeying the law, then there won't be a need for so many police officers and people will be out of a job, and we can't have that now, can we ?

I was brought up that you should be rewarded for what is your responsibility in the first place. That in my opinion is part of the beginning of a nanny state.

Anyways, incentives have to be good. because being stop for good behavior when my schedule is tight enough would piss me off. but these aren't criminal offenses.

B&E, Assault, Burglary/Theft, Vandalism?, Mugging, A job would or should take care of that. But how would the state ingrain responsibility into that.

That's what it is; love has naught to do with wrong and where Christian values are esteemed freedom is known.